I'm in a fantasy league with twelve teams. One team is run by two guys. This is stupid, right?

Sure is! There are only three good excuses to share a fantasy team:

1) There's only one spot left in a league that you and a friend want to join, so you decide to share a team so that you can both get in.

2) It's an expensive league and you're too broke to join on your own, so you split the fee with your friend. (NOTE: If you join an expensive league with an entry fee of, say, a thousand dollars, you are a fucking moron. You just gave away a thousand dollars. Why would you do that to yourself? Head back to the low roller tables, dummy. Trust me, it's just a miserable when you lose $20 in your stupid league.)

3) You joined a league with your kid to teach your kid about fantasy football so that they can like football so that they won't bitch when you put football on the TV. Also, you can bond with your kid as you chew out David Wilson together.

That's it. If you're sharing a team just because you like the idea of sharing a team, you're awful. Are you trying to split GM duties? You'll spend more time trying to get a hold of one another for approvals then you would if you ran the thing yourself.

The whole point of fantasy football is to run the whole show—to be the deranged Jerry Jones and run your horrible team into the ground. You pick the players, you make the lopsided trade requests, and you troll the waiver wire hoping Arian Foster appears there magically. And you do it ALONE, with no friends or allies. Just you in a dark room staring a computer screen, toggling back and forth between flex starters. It's a lonely, miserable, awful exercise and it's meant to be that way. What are you gonna do, sit in a room with your co-GM and bounce a tennis ball off the wall while cooking up zany team names? You're not some Hollywood screenwriting duo. You go to hell.

Andrew:

This fucking 'Final' in yellow on CBS bottom line is driving me nuts. It looks like there is a flag on every play. Fuck these assholes. And fuck Nantz.

It used to be red. Why isn't it red anymore? Red is the perfect color for the FINAL graphic. Oh, how I dread it when I have a subpar fantasy performer and I see his game go to FINAL on the crawl, and I know for certain that he will still no more points that the piddlyshit 3.56 points he got over four quarters. God fucking damn you, FINAL graphic. The red graphic makes it feel like breaking news about someone dying, which is appropriate!

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Ryan:

A few weeks ago I was at visiting a beach on Lake Michigan in Gary, Indiana. On the way in, I saw a beast of a man walking with his wife and kids leaving the beach. The dude had several tattoos, but the one that particularly stood out to me was one of barbed wire around his bicep. Each spike of the barbed wire included tattooed blood pouring out. Above the barbed wire was a crudely drawn Star of David tattoo, and under that it simply said, in threatening text, "JEW BLOOD."

Did the tattoo artist need to be coaxed into designing this, or demand extra payment? When the artist was done, did he feel any guilt? Also, what is the home life like for this guy's kids? Do you think he got the tattoo before or after he was married? It was the most insane tattoo I've ever seen. I wanted to snap a pic but the guy was terrifying.

So was he Jewish then? Like, is the barbed wire pricking his skin and making him bleed his own imaginary Jew blood? Or is his bicep some kind of metaphorical neo-Nazi death camp, and a handful of Jews tried to escape from it, only the bicep was too big and strong and full of Aryan pride? I'm going to assume it's the latter because I don't trust neo-Nazis to think these things through. This is what you get for going to a beach in Gary, Ind. Is the sand made up entirely of used needles?

I assume that the JEW BLOOD tattoo artist was a fellow neo-Nazi and/or prison inmate. When getting a tattoo like that, it's the thought that counts. You're not looking for artistic precision. You just want it clear enough so that people know you're serious about JEW BLOOD. Also, you and the tattoo artist are probably high as shit on meth at the time of application.

Lately I've been thinking about how many potential Hall of Fame players have been passed over in the NFL draft. On the one hand, coaches study obscene amounts of film for months and months before the draft. With the amount of time dedicated to scouting, combining, and wonderlicing, it's tough for anyone to slip under the radar these days. On the other hand, you have guys like Tom Brady and Kurt Warner who were passed over repeatedly in the draft and then only given a chance to play in the NFL due to luck and favorable circumstances. There has to be more HOF caliber players like them that just never caught that break.

My question is: how many Hall of Famers have gone undrafted in the last 20 years? Is it maybe 1 or 2 players? Something crazy like fifteen? Did we miss out on the greatest offensive tackle of all time? Is Greggggg really on to something?

I doubt there are scores of them out there. You're assuming that an unheralded player out there would magically become a Hall of Famer if they just got a chance to play, but that's not how it works. Circumstances mean a great deal. If the player has good coaches (as Brady does) and good offensive talent surrounding them (as Warner did), that obviously makes a huge difference. Success in the NFL is always a mixture of talent and intelligence and hard work and fortunate circumstances, and it's impossible to know what the exact proportions are for every player, which is why it's tiring to sit in a fucking bar and argue with someone about whether Joe Montana made Jerry Rice or the other way around.

I'd like to say that the best players always find a way to break through, but obviously that's not always true. Coaches and GMs will shun good players for any number of reasons: they can't see their talent, they dislike them personally, they paid a shitload of money to some stiff ahead of a better player on the depth chart and can't go back on it, they caught them banging the help, etc. You can be like Greggggggg and believe far too many players get repressed like this, or you can be like Cowherd or some other jackass and be like DURRRRR IN 'MERICA THE PEOPLE WHO DESERVE TO BE SUCCESSFUL ALWAYS RISE TO THE TOP FOLKS DURRRRR, but the truth almost certainly lays somewhere in between. Historically, NFL draft classes have yielded anywhere between zero and 10 Hall of Fame players. If a single draft containing over 250 players can yield such a low percentage of Hall of Famers, then I think the rest of the field has an even lower percentage. I think over the past 20 years, maybe two or three potentially great players got hosed. Poor Elroy McKigginstockings. He was so gritty!

Danyheatleyspeedwagon:

My wife and I are new parents and her best friend has a 2 and a half year old and I do not exaggerate that this child is awful. We're talking little discipline and no boundaries. Nothing is off limits. Closed doors are simply speed bumps, not barriers. Far be it for me to criticize someone else's parenting (patenting: the most competitive sport!) but have you ever had to deal with a great friend who is a horrible parent? It's hard to be the heavy with your own child when another child is allowed to run around and have free rein. Do we just have to resign ourselves to the fact we can't hang around her anymore? Saying something to her is not an option, no?

It's not an option because criticizing another person's parenting does nothing except make them angry and defensive. Saying "you are a bad parent" is essentially telling them "you are a bad person." There's no way to make that pill easy to swallow. Shitty parents are like alcoholics: They have to WANT to stop being shitty. You can't badger them into getting better or else they'll simply end up worse. And it takes every last ounce of strength to NOT say anything, especially when their asshole kids are rubbing off on your own. Just being in that situation can be remarkably stressful.

This is the kind of thing that ends up driving a wedge between friends, colleagues, and even family members. I've seen it happen and it's painful. You want to say something to the bad parent, but instead you end up keeping your mouth shut and passive aggressively cutting them out of your life. You still like them as people, but having a friend who is a bad parent is essentially the same as having a friend who takes a feral wolf around with them wherever they go. You have to prioritize.

Luke:

Over 4th of July week my wife and I tried to get a picture of us and our 20-month-old. We sat 3 times for this picture, attached is the best we got. The first one he completely slipped through my legs and he was choked fiercely by his own shirt and arms, and I guess my legs. The second he actually wasn’t in the picture, by the time it was taken it was just my wife and I and he was halfway down the block. This is the 3rd, we nailed it.

Not bad! The fact that you got him in the frame is victory enough. Most Christmas cards are now iPhoto-created postcards that consist of five separate shots of family members arranged in a tasteful wreath-shaped collage, because no one could get the kids to stay still in a single shot together. You may as well try to get a picture of fucking Big Foot. And frankly, this is okay. You don't want a GLORY KID who is enthused about having his or her picture taken. That's how you end up with a child star/drug addict.

Every year, my old lady starts thinking about potential Christmas card shoots sometime around, oh, March. If we're ever on vacation or traveling close to some sort of scenic highway lookout, she will become fiercely determined to get a family shot together. And we never succeed. No one sits still. The kids start complaining instantly. My back starts to ache. Posing for pictures BLOWS. I know everyone makes fun of models for saying they have a tiresome job, but I bet it's true. I bet standing there in a frigid lake with your tits hanging out all day and Terry Richardson barking pose orders at you gets old fast.

HALFTIME!

Sam:

What is the proper etiquette for changing your relationship status on Facebook in the event that your significant other passes away? What variables go in to deciding the time frame?

My guess is that you would leave your status as MARRIED until you felt you were ready to start dating again. You would leave it unchanged for a long time after the death because A) you still felt married in spirit and were uninterested in announcing otherwise; and B) people grieving over the death of a spouse usually don't give a flying shit about their Facebook profile after that.

If my wife died, I would have a nervous breakdown and then go climb a mountain. And then Facebook would use its various spying techniques and elaborate algorithms to discover that my wife had passed away, and then send a message saying WE NOTICED THAT YOUR WIFE IS DEAD. SWITCH TO TIMELINE AND HONOR HER MEMORY! And then I would hunt down Mark Zuckerberg and kill him with my bare hands.

And then, after a year or so of proper grieving, I would switch my status and write a KILLER Match.com profile, with just the right blend of humor and pathos. A real winner! I bet any young male widow on Match.com pulls insane numbers. Oh my God, his wife died! THAT'S SO ROMANTIC.

Noam:

My wife was cooking a meal for some friends coming over, and was preparing some kind of zucchini recipe. I offered to help, so she asked me to peel and slice the zucchini. 10 bat-sized zucchini, peeled and sliced potato-chip thin. Filled two gallon-sized ziploc bags. My hands were covered with green zucchini-peel residue the whole night. Even after washing and scrubbing four times.

It's true: NEVER agree to peel zucchini. Whatever green slime lurks inside its flesh sticks to you like sea barnacles. I feel like an alien plant is slowly colonizing my body any time I peel one. It's not worth it. Zucchini belongs in the same class as sweet potatoes and taro roots: vegetable-type things that people fry up in a cheap attempt to make healthier junk food. A basket of fried zucchini has fifty million calories. You're not fooling anyone, local Greek taverna.

Travis:

Professional athletes usually have "a guy" for most everything (driver, food, haircut, clothing etc.). Do you think some super baller would ever think it was beneath him to wipe his own ass, therefore hiring "a guy" to be his full time butt wiper? Furthermore, if this did happen, how much money would it take (Per wipe, per day, base salary?) for you to be the full time turd remover for someone like, Rasheed Wallace?

I think that some athlete out there has almost certainly had a lackey flush toilets for him. It would be a way for the athlete to protect himself from germs AND it would be fun to degrade your childhood friend by paying him to flush your turds for you. DON'T LEAVE ANY SKIDMARKS, SHINEBOY! (throws wad of hundreds at loved one)

But I don't think any athlete has hired a butt wiper. I believe that there ARE athletes out there lazy enough to hire someone for the task, but I think they'd all be too gay panic-y to go through with it. Johnny wiped my ass. Does that makes us gays? OH NO!

For two thousand bucks per wipe, I would wipe the hell out of Rasheed Wallace's ass. I would even spit shine his anus if he required it. Nurses wipe asses all the time for far less money. That's good work for a good price, so long as Rasheed doesn't stiff you on your paycheck (and he would)! I would also double my rate for any soft stool output.

Rick:

I'm 31 and I've never smoked a cigarette in my life and I've never had the desire to. Yet, when I imagine myself relaxing, or celebrating some professional victory almost invariably I'm lighting up and this goes as far back as I can remember. What the fuck is wrong with me? It's all the Joe Cool and Marlboro ads from my youth isn't it?

Yep. You're not alone. I hate smoking, but when I see people do it, I think it looks cool as shit. Whenever I use a toothpick, I treat it like a cigarette until my wife sees me and is like, "What the hell are you doing with that toothpick?" CAN IT, DAME. Same with pretzel logs, toothbrushes, lollipop sticks, and any other small phallic mouth object. I also picture smoking a victory cigar any time I pretend-coach the Vikings to eight consecutive Super Bowl victories, and cigars are fucking gross. They smell gross. They get all wet with spittle after three minutes. And people who smoke them are complete assholes. Go to any golf course and find the guy smoking a cigar on the putting green. That guy will ALWAYS be a prick. Always. But I'm so socially conditioned to view the cigar as a symbol of success that I visualize it anyway.

One clever wrinkle is to just swap a blunt into your fantasy and you'll instantly make it both more realistic and more alluring. I want one of those two-page magazine spreads with me puffing on a blunt and exhaling a gorgeous cloud of smoke, Rick Ross-style. That would be fucking awesome.

Dan:

How cool would it be if the last 5 yards before the endzone was just one long strip of trampoline?

You know how some players will leap at the two-yard line and somersault into the end zone on a long score? This would make that somersault cooler. Also, three broken necks per game.

Greg:

My roommate and I have endured a lengthy philosophical debate. He says if a man had a door slammed on his penis, he would be better off with the penis flaccid. I say it would be better for it to be hard, with the thinking that it will put up a little resistance that way. He says erect would be more sensitive and, therefore, painful. So what do you say? For the purpose of the argument, assume that the door is closing at no more than a moderate speed, and leave the balls out of it.

Erect. With an erection, your penis is larger, and therefore you're spreading the impact out over a greater area, thus reducing potential damage. Also, I want my penis to be awake for the impact. I don't want it to be caught napping. Best to know that it was ready to put up a real fight.

I know that an erect penis is more sensitive, but it's not like a limp dick can't feel anything. Ever zip up a limp dick? It's PLENTY sensitive. You're at a greater risk of blood loss with an erect penis getting hit by a swinging door, but I'll take my chances.

Greg:

What if your Vikings had actual viking-helmet horns on their helmets instead of just decals — advantage or a disadvantage overall? Assume the horns are treated like facemasks for the other team's penalties (15 yds for pulling on one), and treated like the crown of the helmet for Vikings penalties (can't violently spear with them, but ordinary contact with the horns is fine).

Advantage. More defenders would avoid contact with a horned runner coming at them. And if you get low, you could ram your horn up through the opponent's chin and impale him on your helmet, bullfighter-style. He's not going anywhere after that. But the Vikings would still go 7-9 because Ponder sucks.

I think pretty much every NFL team would have something of an advantage if they adopted the physical attributes of their mascot. The Eagles would dominate if they had big eagle wings. The Lions would dominate if they had razor-sharp claws. And the Packers would dominate if they ... were good at packing things.

Email of the week!

Brian:

So, I fly a decent amount. I don't mind it, it doesn't particularly scare me (typically). That said, every time I'm in the middle of the plane and we're making our descent into wherever, I make sure I listen in for the landing gear's deployment. I swear, even when everything goes well (which is every time so far, at least for me), the landing gear sounds godawful. Every. Single. Time. It always sounds terrible, like some plane mechanic just said, "Fuck it" about that maintenance check he was supposed to do last week and decided to go eat lunch instead. What the fuck was that noise? Did a wheel fall off? Then all I can think about is to wonder whether or not we're going to have to fly around for hours to get rid of our fuel and then land on the belly of the plane U.S. Airways style.

But really, the landing gear always really sounds like shit. As an aside, I also always make sure to look out the window, just in case I can catch a glimpse of a frozen stowaway who hid in the landing gear compartment and is falling from the sky Dave-Chappelle-in-Con-Air style.